I mean it when I say it's very, very short - it's only a little over a thousand words. It also contains no art. This is partially an excuse to not have to deal with hiring an artist or searching for CC art or having to program sprites and backgrounds. However, it does also fit what I wrote, so hopefully you can overlook it for the 5 minutes it takes you to play the game. c:

I was Inspired™ when my power went out two days ago. Through a combination of the conversation I had with my dad, that day's earlier English class, and my own meandering thoughts, the conversation between the two characters developed. I wrote the first draft on my phone the night we lost power (I couldn't write it on paper without any light) between 10:30 and 11:30. I edited it and programmed it into Ren'py the best I could without help from the internet yesterday. Today, I did all of the final touches (adding music, figuring out how to make the text scroll, and not figuring out how to do the credits) and then had my experienced testers family play it before making the final adjustments.

I hope you guys like the final result. c: I don't plan to ever take the shortcut of going without art again, and I had initially planned for my first project to be a little bigger than this, but inspiration struck and I figured I may as well take advantage of the fact that the lights were out to cut myself a bit of a break. I'd love to hear your feedback, comments, and criticisms on any part of this.

Hey! I gave this a try and really liked it. I thought the writing was good, and the characters sounded believable and relatable. I liked the choice of music and thought that it fit quite nicely as well. I didn't mind staring at a black screen without art, though as you said, that's due to the content of this project.

Playing through this game and listening (although I was technically reading their conversation on the screen, I felt like I was listening on them in the dark) to the characters talk about their thoughts felt quite serene and relaxing, and I definitely appreciated that after having a busy day. The relationship dynamic also left me feeling quite warm and refreshed. So thank you for that.

Congrats of releasing your first project! I'm definitely hoping to see more from you in the future

ALCOR_etc wrote:Hey! I gave this a try and really liked it. I thought the writing was good, and the characters sounded believable and relatable. I liked the choice of music and thought that it fit quite nicely as well. I didn't mind staring at a black screen without art, though as you said, that's due to the content of this project.

Playing through this game and listening (although I was technically reading their conversation on the screen, I felt like I was listening on them in the dark) to the characters talk about their thoughts felt quite serene and relaxing, and I definitely appreciated that after having a busy day. The relationship dynamic also left me feeling quite warm and refreshed. So thank you for that.

Congrats of releasing your first project! I'm definitely hoping to see more from you in the future

Oh my goodness, thank you so, so much, Alcor! <3 I didn't expect someone to notice it so quickly, or to post with praise like this! I'm especially glad that you liked the writing, since that's the part that I'm (supposedly) already experienced in. I spent a bit of time picking the music, too, so I'm glad you thought I made a good choice. I love Alcaknight's work. ^_^

I'm glad you liked the romance elements. One of my friends who saw the earlier draft told me it was a little much, but I decided to assume that was just a personal preference thing. So far it seems like I was right. c:

Thank you again for playing and for the compliments! You really made my night.

Hey Zelan,
I'm visiting your thread now. :)
It's a nice little discussion you got there - Chicken Little seemed like a pretty random reference, are you a fan? :P
Good pick on the music. All in all, I guess you do get away with having everything set in the dark, because the other elements work.

It's a nice little discussion you got there - Chicken Little seemed like a pretty random reference, are you a fan?

I must admit that I am. cx Dylan's talk on that was taken almost directly from what I'd said in my own English class earlier that day. Although I love English class, poetry has always given me trouble, so I decided to have a little fun with that answer (we looked at the first three lines of Endymion).

Good pick on the music. All in all, I guess you do get away with having everything set in the dark, because the other elements work.

Thanks! I love Alcaknight's work, I'd been hoping for an opportunity to use it at some point. And yeah, it really did end up working well as a first release, since I was able to justify skipping out on art assets. Like I said, I don't plan on doing it again, but it was great for helping me to learn what the heck I was doing with Ren'Py.

P.S. Are you afraid of the dark?

Not really. I was disconcerted when the power went out, but that wasn't so much because I was frightened as because I was still getting ready for bed at the time, so I still needed some light. (I ended up having to grope around for my phone and turn that up to the highest brightness.) After that, I was just lying in bed thinking about whatever and I remembered back when I WAS afraid of the dark, as a little kid. (The monsters that Sam mentioned were actually the monsters that I had imagined in my room at that age.) It made me think about how I'd grown out of it - one of the goblins was a turncoat, so he'd help me out, a bunch of the ones from under the bed started a band... long story short, I stopped being afraid when the "monsters," aka my room in the dark, became familiar to me. Now, I say "not really" because a scary situation would probably be made scarier if it was also dark on top of everything else, but the dark by itself doesn't really faze me.

Ha, sorry for the mini-essay there. cx Thank you so much for playing my little game!

Hey, gave it a read-through~! I thought it was sweet and adorable. Dialogue and flow was pretty natural, didn't seem forced or long-winded. I agree with the others when they said refreshing and nice music choice (I'm a sucker for piano).

Harle wrote:Hey, gave it a read-through~! I thought it was sweet and adorable. Dialogue and flow was pretty natural, didn't seem forced or long-winded. I agree with the others when they said refreshing and nice music choice (I'm a sucker for piano).

^_^

~Harle

Hi, Harle! Thank you so much for playing, and for the praise! ^_^ Yeah, piano works really well for a lot of different situations since it's got a large range - it's really very hard to go wrong with it, so I figured it was a good choice.

I'm really glad the dialogue in particular was okay to you! It's something that I tend to struggle with because I've done a lot more spamming the forum like a silly person than creative writing in my life, so my writing tends to be wordy sometimes. I made a conscious effort to make the dialogue here more casual, and I'm not entirely certain that I succeeded, but so far it seems that it's at least not overly stiff.

Suika wrote:Awwww~ That was really cute!! I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Also: what a great idea. It was simple and relaxing, and just all around really awesome. Great story.

Hi there, Suika! Thank you so much for playing! ^_^

It seems like "warm and fuzzy" and "relaxing" are the descriptions that people are coming up with most. That's around what I was going for, so I guess that means I did a good job. c: I actually wasn't sure what to expect in terms of how many downloads/comments I would get, so this is super heartening for me. Thank you all again for playing and commenting!

This was a very touching little game, I enjoyed it! You don't need fancy graphics or sprites to convey good dialogue and a simple moment in time You did awesome, really looking forward to playing what else you make!

bluebirdplays wrote:This was a very touching little game, I enjoyed it! You don't need fancy graphics or sprites to convey good dialogue and a simple moment in time You did awesome, really looking forward to playing what else you make!

'

Thank you so much, bluebird! ^_^ I'm glad that the dialogue was able to support itself.